A historical exhibit is an item of cultural artifacts displayed in a museum or other public venue. Exhibits are usually curated, meaning that someone makes the selection of objects, documents and information to include in an exhibition. A good history exhibit is more than a collection of items put up on a wall; it is an elegant form of visual poetry or storytelling that allows people to connect in some way with larger ideas.
Some museums focus on specialized aspects of history, such as local or regional histories, or national histories. Others attempt to give a holistic view of some period in history or an area of culture, such as a world culture center, or a museum of science and technology. Museums may be government funded, for-profit or nonprofit organizations. For-profit museums make money through admissions, gift shop purchases and fundraising, while non-profit museums are charitable organizations that are tax-exempt and invest any profits back into the museum itself.
A histolircal exhibit tells a story of an event, a person or an idea and can use objects to evoke the senses of smell, taste, sound and touch. It can also take the form of a drama that is experienced as an event. It is important for contemporary museums to avoid object-based shows that lack a human narrative.
When selecting objects to exhibit, a curator makes interpretive judgments about cause and effect, perspective, significance and meaning. The process of creating an exhibit is a political act because it reveals how and why certain events happened as they did and gives people an opportunity to think about the choices that were made. In this sense, the museum is a forum for a democratic discussion of the past and should not be used to impose an uncritical point of view on visitors.
Some museum experiences have few or no artifacts and are called “exhibits” rather than museums, such as the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Nevertheless, they are effective in engaging visitors and providing them with memorable stories about the past. Other museum experiences such as the Tenement Museum and the Merchant’s House Museum recreate the home or business environment of a particular time to help visitors place themselves within a specific context and understand a broader historical concept.